Airbus will start assembly of A320 aircraft at its Chinese plant in August

Airbus will start assembly of A320 aircraft at its Chinese plant in August, said Laurence Barron, head of Airbus’s operations in China. Deliveries of the planes made at the Tianjin factory are on schedule to start in mid-2009, he added. Mr Barron admitted that building the aircraft in China will cost more than in Europe, but the aircraft made there will be sold at the same list prices as the planes assembled elsewhere. “It makes strategic sense”, he asserted, “we generate more business in China by doing this than we would otherwise have done”. Bloomberg (29/05), Air & Cosmos